John Carmack

John D. Carmack II (born August 21, 1970, 53 years old – previously noted as August 20 per other sources ) was the lead programmer at id Software and one of the company's co-founders. He created the Doom engine and the engines for all other id releases until his departure in 2013.

Biography
John Carmack grew up in, part of the Kansas City metropolitan area, and became interested in computers at an early age. He graduated from Shawnee Mission East High School, then attended for two semesters before dropping out to work as a freelance programmer.

software company hired Carmack after a series of successful contract assignments, uniting him with John Romero and other future members of id Software. Afterwards most of that team left Softdisk to form id Software; in particular, Carmack had created a breakthrough of smooth 2D scrolling under  which the team considered "too big" for Softdisk. A prototype of  using this technology was created and pitched to, but they declined further development due to lack of interest in the PC market. In 1990, Carmack, Romero, and others created the first of the Commander Keen series, which would be published as shareware by from 1991 onwards.

Carmack's most recognized accomplishments are in programming games. He was the main developer of several seminal titles including Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, and Quake, as well as their newer followups (including Doom 3 and the rest of the ). He has invented several graphical rendering algorithms, notably and. Carmack's engines have been licensed for use in other influential action games such as Hexen,  , and .

Carmack works to promote philosophy and fan feedback in his game designs. When the source code to Quake was stolen and circulated among the Quake community underground, a programmer unaffiliated with id Software used it to port Quake to Linux, and subsequently sent the patches to Carmack. Instead of pursuing legal action, at Carmack's behest id Software used the patches as the foundation for a company-sanctioned Linux port. In 2009, Carmack posted to the Doomworld forums to solicit players' input on the mechanics of the then-upcoming Doom Classic.

Carmack is also noted for his generosity to charities and gaming communities. Some of the recipients of his charitable contributions include his former high school, promoters of open source software, opponents of software patents, aerospace research, and game enthusiasts. In 1997 he gave away one of his as a prize to the winner of the Quake "" tournament, Dennis "Thresh" Fong.

Though Carmack is best known for his innovations in 3D graphics, he is also a enthusiast and the founder of.

On August 7, 2013, announced John Carmack as its new Chief Technology Officer. On November 22, 2013, reported his resignation from id Software.

On November 13, 2019, Carmack reduced his involvement with Oculus to become their "consulting CTO" in favor of independently researching from home. In December 2022, he resigned from Meta to focus on his start-up Keen Technologies.

Carmack met Katherine Anna Kang after she visited him at the id offices with a friend during. They married in January 2000 in Hawaii and have two children: Christopher Ryan born in August 2004 and a second son born in November 2009. According to social media posts by John, the two separated some time during 2021 and are now divorced.

Awards and honors

 * On March 22, 2001, Carmack was inducted into the ' Hall of Fame, an honor bestowed upon those who have made revolutionary and innovative achievements in the video and computer game industry.
 * Carmack received two Emmy Awards in 2007.
 * On March 24, 2016, the announced Carmack had been awarded the honor of a Fellowship at the British Academy Games Awards.
 * On May 3, 2017, the announced John Carmack would be one of its four recipients of honorary degrees for the year, being granted an honorary Doctorate in Engineering.